Family Reacts to Reduced Accomplice to Capital Murder Charges

Fayetteville, AR--An accomplice to capital murder charge has now been reduced against one of two men charged with killing Dawn Leann Frazier.

34-year-old Lewis Anthony Hedges was charged as an accomplice to capital murder in the stabbing of Dawn Fraizer, but today the tables turned. Prosecutors tell us the evidence in this case isn't what they thought it was, and now hedges is out of jail.

"It'll take a long time to convince me that one person acted alone in that," said Kay Sout, Frazier's sister.

A family, in disbelief over a courtroom decision. Lewis Anthony Hedges is no longer charged as an accomplice in the stabbing death of Dawn Frazier.

"And the thing that's coming across is Lewis Hedges was there, locked the door, said 'ain't nobody leaving here," said Tim Randall, Frazier's cousin. "That's an accomplice. How do you take that and say he didn't have anything to do with it. I don't understand that."

Frazier was murdered in Tontitown in May, and according to an arrest affidavit, both Hedges and Brock Atkins were there. Original documents say Hedges assisted in the killing. But now, prosecutors believe Hedges wasn't even there when Frazier was stabbed to death, and his charges have been reduced to hindering apprehension.

"The evidence that's come in has been the opposite of what we thought it was, is that he wasn't involved in it. He wasn't um, there when the murder took place," said Matt Durrett. "He's now facing hindering apprehension which is a Class B felony and it's punishable bout five to twenty years in the department of correction."

Thursday, Hedges was released from jail and is free until his court date, but Frazier's family says they fear for their lives.

"At the end of the day, there's not a one of us or a piece of paper that can keep a bullet or a crazed man, you know, from going after any of us," said Stout. "I'm standing up to become my sister's voice because she's not able to do that anymore."

Lewis Anthony Hedges and the accused killer, Brock Atkins, are scheduled to be back in court on December 15th.

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